Daily Inspiration: Meet Aidan Avery

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aidan Avery.

Hi Aidan, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Now, I’m a photographer, but my background came from documentary filmmaking. In my early 20s, I fundraised for and then shot a documentary in Ghana. After that, I mostly worked as a digital video editor, editing documentary work that other people had directed, as well as a few indie films.

At 21, all the screentime was getting me down and I wasn’t sure editing was the right profession for me, so I went to college. During college and the years after, I used still used cameras occasionally, but only as a hobby. I mostly shot photojournalistic and “street” photography – kind of like still photograph versions of the documentary work I’d been interested in. I enjoyed taking candid photographs of people, especially when I traveled.

I documented students of color protesting in South Africa in 2016 and shot street scenes during a ten-day visit to Cuba in 2017. Mostly, though, photography was a passive, intermittent hobby while I focused on school, work, and the like. Between 21 and 26, there were probably entire years I went without picking up my SLR camera. I definitely didn’t see photography on the horizon for me in any professional sense.

Last year, though (when I was 27), I sort of re-fell in love with cameras and photography. Or fell in love with it for the first time – it’s hard to say. I certainly discovered something in the medium that I’d never connected with before, and that is the physical and tangible aspect of photography. I bought a textbook about the physical properties of light and how light interacts with different surfaces, and I began practicing lighting in a makeshift studio in my casita. I had never realized how gratifying and exciting it can be to manipulate light and create images from scratch.

Around the same time that I was setting up lights in my studio casita every night, I also began developing film at home. I had shot on film even when photography was just a loose interest, but had always sent it off to a lab for processing – never done it myself. Now, I was developing the film at home. And while there are a lot of reasons to like film (the look, the history, the anticipation of waiting to see your images), for me it was the experiential side of developing that really hooked me and changed my relationship with photography.

For the first time, I really felt I was creating images from start to finish with my own hands. The image-making wasn’t happening behind a screen (digital photography/editing) or thanks to someone else’s work (a photo developing lab). I was holding the roll of film in my hands, loading it into the camera, winding it, shooting it, loading it into the developing tank, smelling the chemicals (oops!), agitating the liquids while developing, hanging the roll to dry, cutting the negatives, and so on. I felt connected to my photographs in a way that I’d never felt before. There was something really special about doing it with your own hands, even when convenience suggested doing it another way

Now, my interest has expanded to all sorts of films. I shoot 35mm, Polaroids, medium format, and some outdated and discontinued films. The physical processes of these mediums are just too fascinating and too fun. (I almost can’t believe that digital technology has pushed them so far out of the mainstream!) I almost always shoot in black-and-white. I focus on light, and I take stylized, and often high contrast, portraits of people. Like during the time I’d made documentaries, people are still my favorite subject.

I should also say that, outside of my portrait work, I have started shooting digitally too. I’m by no means anti-digital. Personally, I don’t love the experience of digital photography as much, but I do see it as a necessary and helpful way to make photography a viable profession. Generally speaking, I shoot digitally when I am shooting commercial content (I shoot food photography and fashion photography), and I shoot film when I’m taking portraits.

Occasionally, I’ll get a commercial job where the client wants the work on the film. That’s the best – to get paid to play with the mediums I love. I want to do more of that, and that’s what I’m positioning myself to do moving forward.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I haven’t had any hardships related to photography.

The one thing that I think about frequently is how easy it would have been to go my entire life without shooting film, or without really discovering the joy of its process. Film photography is no longer really part of the mainstream cultures.

A lot of people don’t even know that photo labs still exist, or they think of film as some low-quality, outdated medium. But I don’t think I would have ever gotten so excited about photography if I’d only ever have had a digital camera in my hands. I guess I just feel lucky that curiosity, time, and place aligned in such a way that I began shooting film photographs.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I shoot stylized, high-contrast black-and-white portraits on various types of film. I shoot in a studio and I use hard, strong lights to create intense highlights and deep shadows. In my photographs, I want both the subject and the light to be visually striking. I also always want these two things to cohere – the subject’s energy and the light’s intensity. Typically, I shoot with powerful, high-contrast lighting and capture strong poses and facial expressions.

I shoot on black-and-white film because I love the process of working with film and I love the look of it. However, I also think it has become a rarefied form in a field that has gone largely digital. Black-and-white photography is itself a minority, and the black-and-white film is even more so. This fact, combined with the gritty, intense style that I shoot, means that I’m offering something unique (or at least rare) these days.

And that’s definitely something that I’m proud of. But it’s also just something I enjoy doing. I didn’t choose film and my style of photography to stand out; I chose them because I love working with film and playing with lights. That those two interests give me have a unique style of photography to offer is a welcome side effect.

What do you like and dislike about the city?
I only moved to Arizona a year ago, and especially since that was during COVID, I don’t feel that I can speak with any real authority about the state. But in the short time I’ve been here, I have loved the landscape.

I spent almost every day last year waking up and drinking coffee out on the front step of my casita just west of Tucson. Each morning I’d see rabbits, quail, desert roses, sometimes bobcats or snakes. This state just feels really open, and natural, and calm. I love that aspect of it.

This probably isn’t an original comment, but if I had to pick something to “like least,” it’d definitely be the heat. It’d be nice to be able to go outdoors during the summer days. Or maybe I’m just a wimp since I didn’t grow up here!

Pricing:

• Black-and-white film portrait sessions – $200+
• Commercial photography – $60/hr
• Acting/Corporate Headshots – $150+

Contact Info:

• Email: aidanavery@gmail.com
• Website: aidanavery.com
• Instagram: @aidanaveryphoto

Image Credits
Aidan Avery, Miracle Sharri, Jane Avery, Emani Spencer, Miracle Sharri,Alana Minkler, and Maggie Nutley